2 In 10 Republicans Believe In Authoritarianism And Myth, Not Reality
A recent Pew Research study reveals that about 21% of Republicans do not believe the January 6 insurrectionists deserve punishment. While somewhat encouraging that a larger number do not support the insurrectionists, this is still a large enough number to successfully overthrow our very fragile and struggling democracy. A study of world events in governments overthrown, including our own Revolution suggests this to be quite true and a very serious threat.
The solution? Communications experts are saying that a massive public discussion on causes and solutions is required of democracy loving Americans, led by the our very necessary media, public figures in many fields of expertise and well regarded democracy loving leaders formed into commissions and panels widely covered by our media if our democracy is to be saved. This of course, includes massive governing reforms to bolster and increase public confidence that democracy can solve major problems our citizens struggle with every day: economic, social, policing, governing and fairness of our society. As in the BLM movement, we require a massive public movement demanding help from our leaders in many sectors if democracy is to be salvaged.
This public education requires a massive reinforcement of the necessity for truth telling, logic, rationality, science, the reliability of data and vital importance of critical thinking among the majority not largely driven by myth and belief over fact-driven truth and rationality.
Authoritarian rule is much easier, more streamlined, requiring little public engagement. Democracy requires engagement, participation and hard, vigilant work to maintain and improve. This, for the 20% of Republicans is a likely impossible lift; the rest of us, the majority, must rise up and act now, not tomorrow or down the road. This likely starts with the elimination of the Filibuster to get anything done at the Federal Level. Gerrymandering must be eliminated at the local and Federal levels to get this process of saving democracy started. Anything short of these national and local reforms will result in failure.
How did we get here? Let's start with religion. The core Evangelical base of this Republican support for Authoritarianism is a major part of the cause. This group, along with most other religionists, bases its thinking, if you can call it that, on a massive body of myths, many rooted in Pagan traditions incorporated in early and late Christian theology. That is a blog by itself. Theologians have well documented the roots of beliefs like virgin birth, salvation, divine intervention, miracles and the like. More sophisticated Catholic theology further amplifies this dependence on mythology and male dominated authoritarianism; things like transubstantiation and Papal infallibility for example and lord knows, Republicanism is strongly populated with Catholics; just look at Republican leadership over the last few decades and the Supreme Court.
The large number of Americans driven by mythological religious belief and also driven by America's penchant for mythology and untruth about our history and origins as a society. This circumstance is fueled by our failure to reckon with our history of invasion, oppression of those we have displaced and/or enslaved to meet our economic goals in the Americas and our failure to come to terms with its impact on those we dominate and the success of our current society and democratic governance.
We are not a bad people. Our origins are not all bad. We are not unlike societies which preceded ours. We are human, thus flawed in some ways, amazing in other ways. We are capable of correcting our ways and improving on our flaws if we engage our brains and consciences.
What remains to be seen is if we and our leaders will rise to the challenge to save and improve on our form of democracy and isolate those intent on imposing their deeply ignorant and greedy authoritarianism on us, the majority.
